


Cold side of the pillow

by errantknightess



Series: Together we've got two good eyes [2]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/errantknightess/pseuds/errantknightess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allen didn’t hog the blanket as much as claimed it in the name of everything holy. He usurped it. The blanket was absolutely and utterly conquered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold side of the pillow

They didn’t have much luck with their lodgings this time – though to be fair, they were lucky to find any place to stay at all in this weather. A sudden blizzard paralyzed the whole town in a matter of half an hour and all the inns were packed with transients much like them, who got unexpectedly snowed in. After what felt like an eternity of traversing empty, wind-swept streets, Allen and Lavi finally stumbled upon a small business squeezed in at the far end of a side street. The place was run-down and the owner almost certainly swindled them on the price, but beggars can’t be choosers. They struck a deal, ate a cold dinner and got the key to what could very well be the last vacant room in town.

It was easy to see at the first glance why that would be the case.

The wooden floor, bare save for a solitary dead cockroach, apparently hadn’t been swept for a good part of the month. On the windowsill, snow piled up under a broken glass pane that shook violently with every sudden gust and invited the cold right in. Even the spider that ran across the ceiling and disappeared somewhere in a dark corner looked sickly and neglected.

Allen and Lavi stood in the doorway, looking around and trembling in the draught. Their eyes bounced from wall to wall in a quick and merciless assessment of the situation. The narrow bed on their left definitely remembered better times – a very, very long time ago. The one on the right was significantly bigger and looked surprisingly new. The exorcists glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes. There was only one way to resolve this.

“Rock, paper, scissors!”

“Dammit!” Allen’s open palm proceeded to slam his forehead as his paper lost to Lavi’s scissors. “Best two out of three?” he suggested hopefully.

“No way. I beat you fair and square.” Lavi tossed his suitcase on the good bed to mark his territory. They took off their coats and hanged them on a rickety chair to dry. Allen folded his arms, shivering in his shirt; he hoped briefly that their soaked uniforms won’t freeze solid overnight. He shuddered again, this time in surprise, as Lavi rubbed his back with one hand in an attempt to ease both the cold and his sour mood.

“Hey, it’s just one night. You’ll survive.”

“Yeah, if the bedbugs don’t eat me alive.” Allen strode over to his sorry excuse of a bed and lifted the blanket to discover a jaundiced sheet, a malnourished pillow and, thankfully, no proverbial insects. He tested the mattress, pressing it with his hand. The wooden monster underneath creaked in protest and wobbled slightly on its uneven legs.

“Well, don’t let them bite.” Across the room, Lavi made himself comfortable in similarly feeble bedclothes, but at least his bedframe remained silent about it. Allen sighed and lay down carefully, accompanied by metallic wailing of springs. He turned on the side with a loud cracking, his face to the wall, his eyes absent-mindedly tracing numerous cracks and scratches on the dirty wallpaper. Right in front of him there was a fresh stain, deep reddish-brown and about as big as his palm. Allen decided he didn’t want to know. He rolled on his back. The bed swayed, its shorter leg tapping a frantic staccato against the floor.

“Can’t you lay still?” Lavi groaned much like the feral piece of furniture. Allen gave him a look of indignation. _Easy for you to say_ , he thought. He bounced violently on the mattress, emitting a new symphony of squeaks.

“Don’t think that will make me switch with you.”

“I know.” Allen rolled over on his stomach and started to rock the bed, rhythmically hitting the floor.

“Now you’re just doing this to piss me off.”

“Observant as always. You’ll make a great Bookman.”

“Shut up.” Lavi put the pillow over his head and pressed it against his ears. Allen creaked his bed some more, but didn’t get any response, so he gave up and raised himself up on his elbows to turn on his side again – or rather, tried to; as soon as he shifted his weight, the bed roared like never before and gave up as well, falling apart with a crash so loud it could rouse the dead as efficiently as the Millennium Earl himself.

“Stop it, will ya?” Lavi hurled his pillow in the general direction of the noise before fully realizing its source. He looked at the sad remains of the so-called bed, a mess of tangled sheets, bare springs and jagged splinters, and blinked.

“Hey Allen, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Allen heaved himself up on the pile, freed his legs from the blanket and stood up, brushing his shirt from dust and wooden chips. He took in the size of the disaster and sighed.

“I guess we’ll have to pay for that.”

“It’s your fault, you pay that yourself! Serves you right for acting like a clown.”

Allen dragged his hand across his face.

“Great, another debt, and this time all on my own…”

“Don’t even think about running off,” Lavi raised his finger with a warning. “I know how to find you.”

“I’ll worry about that later,” Allen sighed and pulled at the mattress, to no effect. He put his foot on the broken frame, dug his heels in and tried again. Still no results, save for another serving of groans and wood knocking on wood. The old bastard sang even after death.

“What now…?” Lavi, who had already turned back in, raised his head and sent Allen a weary glance. “Allen, what on earth are you doing?”

“I want to get the mattress out and sleep on the floor… But it’s stuck. It must’ve caught on the frame somewhere and I—can’t—move—it.” Allen punctuated this last statement with violent jerks that shook the wreckage and banged it against the floor. Lavi clenched his eye with every thud. His patience clearly ran out.

“Just leave it and come here,” he said, shuffling aside on his own bed.

Allen looked over at him, surprised.

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. It’s big enough for the two of us. And we both need a proper rest. So cut the crap and let’s get some sleep already.”

Allen hesitantly dropped the mattress and plucked at his blanket instead, but it also refused to go with him. Defeated, he scooped up Lavi’s pillow that landed on the top of the pile of debris and walked over to the other side of the room.

“You sure you don’t mind?” he asked, slipping in next to Lavi.

“It’s all right.” Lavi smiled softly, taking his pillow back and beating it up in shape. “As long as you don’t hog the blanket or trash around too much.” If he had been genuinely annoyed with Allen at any point, there was no trace of it left now – just tiredness.

Allen smiled back.

“Thanks. I promise I won’t hog the blanket.”

He shuffled back to the edge of the bed, legs straight and stiff, trying to take up as little space as possible. The bed was fairly wide, but obviously not meant to accommodate two people comfortably. It made him feel like an intruder, even though he knew Lavi really didn’t mind him there. They lay for a moment, shifting around and keeping a safe distance, the blanket stretched taut over them, until finally Lavi grabbed Allen by the arm and pulled him in.

“Huh?” Allen blinked, stumped by the unexpected proximity. Lavi let out a stifled laugh, a puff of air through the nose that swept Allen’s face and made him feel even more awkward.

“You’re gonna fall off if you lie like that.”

“Oh. Right,” Allen croaked and turned to the other side to hide his embarrassment. By now, he had already grown pretty used to Lavi’s spontaneous discharges of physical affection, but being so close, so suddenly, in such a situation, was something new. It wasn’t the discomfort of having his personal space invaded – Allen has gotten over that one a long while ago, a predictable side effect of working alongside someone who insists on grabbing your elbow instead of just telling you to turn right and doesn’t see a problem with nodding off on your shoulder when the train is late. No, it was something else entirely, and Allen couldn’t even pinpoint if the ripping sensation in his gut was a bad thing or not. He curled his knees up to his chest, trying to comfort his whirling stomach. Behind him, he felt Lavi turn around as well, bumping into him and muttering a groggy apology. That was familiar, in a way, the touch of Lavi’s back across his shoulders and the prodding of his bony shoulder blades. They stood like that many times on the battlefield, leaning against each other for support. It meant safety and trust, and Allen soon found himself dozing off, pressed snug against his friend, feeling warm and light.

***

Allen didn’t _hog_ the blanket as much as _claimed it in the name of everything holy_. He usurped it. The blanket was absolutely and utterly conquered.

Lavi tugged at it fruitlessly, cursing his good heart. His feet were stone cold. The blizzard outside showed no signs of stopping, and the broken window chirped gleefully as snow and wind invaded the room.

“Allen, I’m freezing,” Lavi whined, still trying to yank at least some of the blanket over to his side. He slipped his foot underneath it and poked Allen’s shin with icy toes, hoping to get a reaction, but Allen made nothing of this direct assault. He slept like a log, clutching Lavi’s blanket to his chest and facing away in complete denial of its rightful owner. Resigned, Lavi rested his feet against Allen’s and moved closer to make the most of the shabby edge hanging over his friend’s back. He managed to cover most of his shoulder and that was about as much as he could hope for. But now that he shifted near, it helped a little. Even inches away, he could feel the warmth radiating from Allen’s body in front of him. The cold still stung along his spine, but his cheeks burned. Lavi shifted closer still, trying to get the blanket to reach his back. His face nearly touched Allen’s head; stray strands of white hair tickled his lips. Allen’s shoulders moved against his chest, raising and dropping slightly in a steady rhythm of breaths.

Lavi lay motionless, his heartbeat frantically filling the space between the two of them. He was suddenly aware of the way his own breath pressed his chest closer to Allen’s back every couple of seconds, at erratic, unpredictable intervals. He breathed out slowly, trying to synchronize. The air from his mouth stirred the hair on Allen’s neck. Allen mumbled something, curled up his legs and shifted slightly towards the foot of the bed, pulling the blanket down from Lavi’s shoulder as he moved.

“Oh, come on,” Lavi grumbled into the pillow, lifted himself on his elbow and reached over Allen’s body. He grabbed the blanket and pulled as hard as he could. Allen’s grip tightened. Lavi groped around, found his hand and tried to pry it open, wedging his own fingers between Allen’s and ripping at the cloth bundled in his fist. It didn’t work. Allen snuggled the blanket up to his chin and clasped his left hand over Lavi’s palm. The touch was so unexpected Lavi almost gasped. The hand felt dry and rough and chilly on his skin, so different from the soft, warm flesh under his fingers. Lavi realized with surprise that he had never touched Allen’s deformed arm before. It was… weird. Not entirely unpleasant, but a bit unsettling, in a way he couldn’t quite compare to anything he knew in the expanse of his memory. He sat up and put his free hand on top of Allen’s, tracing the ridged joints, running his thumb across the hard, coarse skin that strangely resembled scar tissue and over the deep cross-shaped mark. Gently, he pulled the hand away; it didn’t resist. Encouraged by this success, Lavi tugged at the blanket again. No luck.

“Seriously now,” he groaned, plopping back on the pillow. For a minute he lay surrendered, contemplating the moldy ceiling, before turning on his side with a final resolve.

“Hey,” he muttered, lightly prodding Allen in the ribs with his finger. “Allen. Share the blanket.”

No reaction. The prodding intensified. A couple of jabs later, Lavi leaned in to bring his mouth closer to Allen’s ear.

“Allen,” he whispered again, his breath crashing against his friend’s cheek and coming back to his lips, hot and heavy. “Allen. The blanket.”

He was just about to give up for good, cold feet be damned, when suddenly Allen let go of the blanket and turned around, stretched out his legs and threw his arm over Lavi’s side. His head was now tucked under Lavi’s chin, a cold nose between his collarbones and long, relaxed gasps warm against his chest.

Lavi felt something clutching in his stomach. After a brief moment of daze, he wrapped the jumbled blanket over them both, put his arm around Allen and finally closed his eyes, with his fingers tangled in Allen’s hair and lips pressed to his forehead, smiling against his skin.


End file.
